Hi,
I am performing my first exchange migration and I am trying to find it if the below HA configuration will work succesfully.
I have two servers in the same site both runnning CA/HT/MBX roles.
I want to create a DAG for database HA, HT's are already HA (I believe) now my problem is CAS. I don't have a hardware load-balancer nor can I get one, I cannot use WNLB due to servers running all 3 roles but can I use the below? It may not be supported by Microsoft but will it work?
It appears as though the DAG IP address is set up as an IP Address Resource in the Failover Cluster Manager. As a result, that IP address is always either assigned to EXCH1 (my first Exchange box) or EXCH2.
As a test, I created a DNS record to point to the IP address set up by DAG, set up the CAS array and assigned that array to my mailbox. Using that new DNS hostname, clients are able to access all services (OWA, Outlook Anywhere, SMTP, etc.) and in the event
I disconnect EXCH1, EXCH2 takes over and clients can still access all services. Since I'm just looking for EXCH2 to take over when EXCH1 fails, it seems like a solid setup. I imagine this is how the IP Address Resource was designed to be used in Failover Clustering,
so even though it was set up by DAG I don't see why it cannot also be used as the address in which clients access mail services.